The first time.

Today it is January 13th , Today is my Birthday - I like to start simply by saying a huge thankyou to everyone who has either said happy birthday , sent me a card , posted on my facebook wall or texted me.
As well as being my Birthday today there is a By-election happening in Oldham and Saddleworth and i would like to wish Stephen Morris (English Democrat) and the other nationalists a great day and a good result - Hoping that the main 3 parties have a bad day at the polls.

Anyway I promised you something a bit special and hopefully this will be it.

Today is a bit special for me for another reason other than it being my birthday , Today i also celebrate "Deaf Day".
It was on this day 12 years ago that I came round out of what i was told was a light coma and the first time I think I actually realised I could not hear.
I was in hospital and I woke up to see My mum , dad , nan , aunt and 2 of my friends standing at the end of my bed looking at me - apparently i lifted my head looked at them , asked whats going on and followed that up by saying i don't seam to be able to hear anything and promptly laid back down and went back to sleep again -.

It seams very strange that about 3 months before i was working as head of security where i was and still am and was celebrating a friends birthday and Halloween at the same time with a surprise fancy dress party and to move on to that day and to find me lying in bed very ill and not able to hear.

I have to say that today i look at my hearing loss as being one of the best things that has ever happened to me , simply because of the people i met whilst going in and out of hospitals , the new me i found as to be honest the me of then was not something i look back and really like that much , I was extremely self obsessed and didn't really care for the close people around me and this was a really big wake up call.
Also sometime after I lost my hearing about 18 months or so after , i think it was I got implanted with my cochlear implant and that was and still is phenomenal to honest with you , Imagine having what is in effect a light switch on the side of your head , I get up in the morning and put this this on the side of my head and the whole world comes alive with sound , and at the end of the day or when someone is getting on your nerves or things become to much for you , you just switch it off and the world is gone again , One of the biggest bonuses is the fact that unless their is a major earthquake nothing in the world is gonna wake me up - What a result that is.

I will say here that , yes at the time i was fairly devastated i was 29 years of age and apart from when i was younger I had not really been ill that often.
I was in hospital about 3 and half weeks and I hated every minute of it , which contradicts what i have already said but the first hospital and the second hospital were different places , the second being Grays Inn road Ear , Throat and Nose hospital and the staff there are awesome to say the least.
Every step of the way from the time I went in to see them as an out patient because my dad had got fed up with me because i had not heard anything for almost 3 months right through my rehabilitaion , my selection process for my implant , to today when i visit every year or so as an out patient once again I am given the best treatment that there is.

I was told one day when the people manager came to visit me from work to see how i was getting along that if offered something never say no straight away and always leave that door ajar for as long as possible.

Many things changed for me the day i woke up I found a world Id never been inside before and never imagined or even thought about entering , It was a foreign world to me a world at the start where i was not happy and wanted out and I did everything in my power to attempt to get myself to hear , Its odd to think my Doctor and the first hospital I went to over the first few months thought that i was actually lying about being deaf and that about 5 minutes after i went into a cubicle at Grays Inn road , the doctor turned to my dad and simply said that id never hear anything again.
It was a world where id have to learn many knew things and also discover as much as i learned , the Text phone or minicom was the strangest holding conversations with people and finding a 3rd person involved was so strange and the people whom I rang when i first got it who just didn't know what to say or do cus they knew the old Ben.
Sign Language , i don't sign very well but I can do a little , understanding how to communicate with people and Lip reading which is a massive advantage , but can also get you into trouble as i have found out if you read the wrong people.
After about 7 months i could walk into a pub and stand leaning against a table and within a minute I would be able to tell you how noisy that pub was simply by the vibration on the table , the little lights on the music boxes and how people were speaking.

I found many new friends and discovered many things - I went to a place called the Link centre in Eastbourne which was for adults who had lost their hearing and they taught many things in a week , you were able to take a person with you so they could learn as well what you learnt and so they could share the experience as it was called , but to be honest I only went to shut my mum up from whinging every day about going as it would do me good and when i did go they BOTH took me to the train station and stood outside the carriage window pulling stupid faces , and I was really not happy because when I had got on the train Id seen a really nice girl and sat opposite her ,but they found it highly funny to pull these faces and embarrassed the hell out of me. (She never did speak to me)
Anyway I went to the Link centre and before hand i had been pretty down and did not really have any interest in doing anything and simply used to get up go down the stairs to the front room and watch telly and then at the end of the day go back to bed , Anytime my mum asked me to do something i moaned about it.
Coming home after that week alone as I had been to pig headed to take anybody with me and there had been 6 others there who had gone deaf for various reasons and a person with them I was a changed person , it was the first time Id been in the company of other people who could not hear , who had the same thoughts as me and the same concerns as me , these people were going through it like me and nobody could understand what they were living through , just like me.

You have to understand that going from a normal hearing person to suddenly deaf is a really life changing thing.
To talk to somebody at first because lip reading just doesn't happen over night , people used to write things down for me which often meant very long conversations.
I felt excluded from what was going on because whereas before (when i didn't want to be interested or know) Id had the choice of taking part in a conversation I would get stroppy and fly off the handle because people did nothing to include me - I forgot that not only was I living it , but my friends and my family were looking on and seeing somebody who at times could not even stand up without falling over , simply because my balance did not exist.
And oh THE NOISE , inside my head - it drove me crazy and at times it still does , The thing i could not understand the most is the noise i get inside my head various sounds from high pitch buzzing to tiny bells and this is tinnitus which i get all the time its the first thing i wake up to and the last thing i fall asleep to.
I could never understand how if i am that deaf and I am classed as profoundly deaf why I could heart or even got this noise and the doctor told me it was because my head did not understand why I could not hear and was its way of dealing with it

Every time I went out of the house at first alone for months my mum said she would stand at the door and just hope the cars would miss me as very often Id just step out because I could not hear them and she said I d stop and wobble and then lean so I did not fall over.
It would take me an hour to walk to the post box and back as i used that post box as walking exercise and wrote many letters to friends and the box is like 3 minutes away -Id meet on the way various neighbours who just happened to come out and mow their lawn or move something in their front garden when I walked past , to see if I was OK and just ponder around in case I fell over and when i got back home id find my mum in the front garden cutting some bushes back or trimming the hedge -It wasn't something I ever thought about at the time - But it was quite nice.

There was the time I was invited to a birthday party and my friend held a pub party for her and most of her friends Becuase i was find group situations very difficult to handle cus understanding what was going on was VERY hard and i was putting pressure on friends because I could not understand and also becuase they wanted to make sure I was alright.
And she held a get together at her parents house with me and 5 others where we all just sat around and played monopoly.
One of the people there was Laurence and when he arrived he sat away from me , he was crazy anyway and as the night moved on I had noticed he had been looking at me and if id stood up he'd moved away , i thought he was being polite but later in the evening something was said and he simply turned round and said he was scared of me because he did not want to end up deaf - He was lynched by the others and that was the first time id laughed since going deaf.

There were many milestones and many days I struggled big time with what was going on around me and within my head as well
A huge milestone was returning to work (only part time) a few hours a week but having a reason to get up and go out , there was also returning to the Beaver scouts (I was their leader) I'm not sure who was more worried about that the 6 or 7 year olds seeing me and knowing I could not hear or me just for the fact I knew they were being loud but heard nothing , the Implant and beyond with learning again was massive as well.
Each day now is a new day and I enjoy them all as much as possible - Today I am who you see and I hide nothing - Yes i have bed days - and some days i wished Id have stayed in bed ,but we all do.
Today and everyday I am me and that me is quite confident and quite outspoken , But i hide nothing and do what i enjoy.
There is so much more i could say but I hope this has been interesting and thank you for reading today and whoever you are have a great day.